


The Spring Fling

by Elisabeth



Series: The Recluse [2]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies), Spider-Man - All Media Types
Genre: Alien Technology, F/M, Field Trip, First Crush
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-09
Updated: 2020-07-11
Packaged: 2021-03-05 02:54:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 9,831
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25167283
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elisabeth/pseuds/Elisabeth
Summary: Peter stumbles on a weapons deal, meets Aaron Davis, meets the Vulture, and generally has an unpleasant time. He does what he can to hunt down the people selling very dangerous weapons in Queens, and learns a few shocking things along the way.This generally follows the time of Spider-Man: Homecoming went, but there are some significant changes.
Relationships: Liz Allan/Peter Parker, Ned Leeds & Peter Parker, Peter Parker & Natasha Romanov
Series: The Recluse [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1820914
Comments: 5
Kudos: 57





	1. Alien Arms Deal

**Author's Note:**

> Installment two of my off-shoot spider-man verse. Hope you like it xx
> 
> A/N: This will make more sense once part II is up, but in general, I don’t think Natasha Romanov is going to have the same hang-ups Tony Stark does when it comes to using children as fighters, nor the same instinct to coddle. She was the top graduate of a program that sends girls as young as ten out on missions to kill people. If anything, she wants to toughen him up asap rather than just bench him, and it changes a lot of the interactions that Peter has with the adults in his life.

### Chapter One - Alien Arms Dealings

_March, 2016 - Spring of Sophomore Year_

Peter felt like a piece of cold, messy garbage in the worst Bronx dumpster. He had just been dragged for at least a mile behind a speeding van and then gotten dumped into the East River. That had been the _actual_ worst, Peter decided as he sat on the playground dome watching the Iron Man suit fly away. He shivered as the built-in heater kicked off after a few minutes. 

“Karen, why did you kill the heat?” he asked with a sad whine at the end as he stood up, not waiting for an answer.

“Your body temperature has climbed back up to normal levels and you are beginning physical activity,” she said as he stood up, preparing to jump off the dome.

“Hey Karen, do you think you could direct me back to where that crazy weapon flew out of the truck?”

“Rerouting now.”

Peter did a double back-flip off the dome out of sheer joy before shooting a web up into the trees and swinging off. 

“Karen, call Ned please.”

“Calling Ned.”

“Ned, you need to meet me at my place if you’re still up for some crazy stuff. You would not believe what I found in a bunch of bushes,” Peter starts, and the two of them stay on the line the whole way to Peter’s apartment.

“Ugh, are you sure you don’t want to just go to Liz’s party? She did ask us if we wanted to go.”

“I think she said we could come if we also bring Spider-man, which is definitely not possible,” Peter said with a grumble. “I can’t believe you blurted that out in gym class.”

“I’m sorry, dude. You totally didn’t have to immediately deny it though,”

“Why would I want anyone at school to know that I know him? It makes my life ten times more difficult.” Ned only responded with a huge sigh, which Peter thought was totally uncalled for.

An hour later, the two of them are hunched over the battered weapon on the roof of Peter’s building. They have the contents of May’s tool-box and are trying to get whatever it is that’s purple and glowing out of the middle of the contraption.

“It has to be some kind of alien power source, see where it’s hooked in here?” Peter decided, pointing to where there was a bracket holding in the purple gem. 

“Yeah,” Ned agreed, but he was looking closely at all the other attachments, “but those attachments are all human, the tiny motherboards and charger couplings. I charge my toothbrush with those!”

“So you’re saying that they’ve figured out how to make hybrid human and alien tech, and that’s what all this destruction has been?” Peter asked as he worked on forcing the housing out of the way by hand, just using his strength.

“Yes,” Ned said as he watched Pete struggle. “Also, I would like you to know that this is the coolest conversation I have ever had in my life and I’m super mad that I have nobody to talk to about this stuff.”

“What do you even mean you have nobody to talk to? Am I just chopped liver to you?”

“Dude, you get all weird when I get super excited about this, give me some credit. I need someone else to be on my level.”

“Sorry,” Peter said with a shrug, “I’ll try harder.” The housing finally gave a bit under his strength, and the two boys were able to gently pull it out of its slot.

“This thing is so cool,” Ned breathed again, “We really need to sneak into the robotics lab one night. I think they have undamaged versions of the power converters that we can use. Can you even imagine?”

“Yeah,” Peter said a bit out of breath, “I have these plans for a crazy drone that I want to make, and this could be the power source that lets it do way more than a battery would. Do you want to see what we can do?”

“How is that even a question you’re asking me. Of course I want to play with crazy alien technology!” Ned’s tone implied that Peter was a complete idiot if he needed to ask.

“Tonight?”

“No way dude, my mom has been texting for the last ten minutes asking where I am. I told her I was on the way home. Can you… swing me there?”

“Well, I can sure try,” Peter said with a laugh.

Peter and Ned landed a block down from Ned’s house ten minutes later. Peter was delighted until he looked back down at Ned, who was pale and shaking a bit.

“Ok, while that was super impressive, I never, ever, ever, ever want to do it again.” 

“Whoops, sorry Ned,” was all Peter shouted before he launched himself back into the air.

* * *

The duo finished the drone four days of solid work later and it was awesome. It was about nine inches long and shaped and colored like a Blackhawk. They had gotten the power core tucked up inside the housing for more stealth. Thankfully, Ned and Karen were both able to link up to the controls as needed. They took it out for a maiden test run the next day after school.

The two of them headed down to the football field and Ned was practicing with the controls as Peter fiddled with some spare parts. After ten minutes of test-flights, his spidey sense went haywire for a few seconds and he looked frantically around the schoolyard. There were two men walking over from the opposite corner of the field, carrying a strange looking device between them.

“Ned, get under here!” Peter hissed, as he bodily dragged Ned under the bleachers. Ned recalled the drone as Peter pulled him out of sight from the rest of the field.

“Peter, what are you doing? This is so cool! The core hasn’t even come close to dimming. I don’t think we’re -”  
“Ned, shut up.” Peter tries to get a hand over Ned’s mouth to keep him from talking, but Ned jerks his head back

“Peter, what is-”

“Ned,” he says frantically, pointing out towards the field, “those two guys with the box that looks like a Geiger counter. They were the ones that tried to vaporize me the night of the party, OK?”

“What? That’s crazy!! That’s so cool,” Ned realizes that Peter is staring at him with an angry expression on his face. “I mean, that’s totally horrible and I’m glad you’re not vaporized. I’m just saying that it’s super cool that this is part of our life now, and I want to thank you for bringing me with you on this journey,” Ned attempted to explain. Peter just stared at him for a second before smiling. 

“Look, you take the recluse drone and head out that way,” Peter pointed towards the main road running behind the football field. “I’m gonna to try and land a tracker on them.”

Peter huddled behind the stands, watching as the two men followed the path the drone had taken before they deactivated it. He planted himself in a good spot to see where he had hidden with Ned as they booked it out of there and waited. He could hear some quiet talk, but it was all pretty innocuous until,  
“Boss will actually kill us if he finds out where we are right now.” The man on the right looked legitimately scared. Peter didn’t understand why them being here was so bad in comparison to any other places they may have gone.

“You think I don’t know that?” The second one hissed. “Do you even know how many things I’ve heard about the gumdrop? All of the things, he’s like the proudest dad ever,” Peter took these words in, but was still the most confused. _Gumdrop?_

He tried to get closer without them noticing, but they stayed firmly out in the middle of the field.

“Look, it’s centered right here, and clearly there’s nothing. Maybe someone just wanted to hit it with a hammer in a big open field or something.”

“Whatever, let’s scram before he catches wind of where we are. I do not want to be on the wrong side of that temper again,” The two of them started heading back the way they came, to the opposite side of the field from Peter. He frantically tried to attach a tracker to them anywhere possible, but wasn’t able to land one from his distance.

“Shit,” he muttered, sad to have lost the lead. He waited until they were out of view before popping back up from the bleachers and running to catch up to Ned. They spent the rest of the afternoon talking about potential modifications to the drone, starting with a lead liner around the core to keep any more residual radiation from leaking out. 

“Do you think we could just drip solder across the whole outside of it?” Ned offered up as the fastest solution. “And then we can just attach the connectors below the solder, cover up the junctions, and see what happens?” Peter shrugged,

“Worth a shot,” he said.

In the end, the drone turned out to be best for long-distance reconnaissance, just like its inspiration had been. The pair of them had loaded it up with useful technology, but Peter had secretly gone a step further and also traded Natasha some of his web fluid canisters for I.C.E.R. rounds and something she called a recluse-bite. 

“It’ll drop someone that the I.C.E.R. rounds won’t drop, like enhanced people, so be careful with it because it’s probably one of the few things that will knock you out,” she said with a warning. “Absolute last resort,” Peter had agreed immediately. “I don’t want to hurt anyone if I can help it,” he said. She just patted his shoulder.

* * *

_A few days after the Football Field Incident_

“Hey Nat,” Peter said as he left a voicemail on the phone number Nat had given him. “Spider-man patrol has been really quiet lately and I had a big talk with May about taking more of an interest in my grades. I’m joining a field trip to DC this weekend, and I just wanted to let you know in advance because I have an actual curse that ruins all field trips that I’ve been on in the past four years. I’m pre-warning you that if there are shenanigans that happen, I’m very sorry.” Peter hung up the phone and looked up as Ned knocked on his bedroom door.

“Man, I’m so glad you talked Liz into letting you back onto the decathlon team,” He said with a happy sigh. “I did not want to room with anyone else. What if they stuck me with Flash?” The two of them shudder together in horror. 

* * *

_On the field trip_

“Peter, Ned, do you two want to go swimming with us?” Liz Allan was standing there by their table, smiling and asking them questions. Peter stared silently up at her for a couple of seconds before realizing that she had asked a question and was waiting for an answer. Peter and Ned looked at each other and shrugged.

“That would be great, we’ll definitely come,” Ned rescued him from his own awkwardness. The team had just finished eating a late dinner Friday night and Mr. Harrington was already getting ready for bed. Betty’s mom was the other chaperone that had ridden on the bus with them, She smiled at all of them as they piled into individual rooms and threw on swimsuits. The hotel they had landed in wasn’t the fanciest, but they did have an indoor pool. 

Once at the pool, Peter and Ned sat on the side of the hot tub, dangling their legs in and talking quietly while they watched some of their teammates splashing in the main pool. They had both opted to leave their shirts on, Ned out of self-consciousness and Peter in solidarity. He didn’t really feel like answering prying questions tonight anyway.

“Any update on the metal-wing guy?” Ned asked in a low voice. Peter was thankful that the echoes were loud enough to distort his words from carrying further than a few feet.

“No,” Pete sighed. “I’ve been keeping a close eye out but everything has been weirdly quiet. I even asked everyone else with ears on the ground to look out for the alien tech used in crimes.”

“Who’s everyone else?” Ned asked, eyes wide.

“Well, Happy is the one whose phone number I have, and he’s head of security for Stark here in New York. He said he’d ask around.” Peter didn’t want to give up the Natasha secret. It was mostly because Natasha would actually kill him and make it look like an accident, but also because Ned wasn’t physically capable of keeping any more secrets without exploding.

“That’s so cool,” Ned said happily. “Hey, I’m about to overheat, you want to move to the big pool? We can go hang with Michelle and not talk to each other.” They both looked over to where Michelle had her feet dangling in the water with a book in her hands.

“Sure,” Peter agreed and stood up. He hauled Ned up behind him and the two of them made their way across the pool deck. Peter’s tingle went off halfway across the concrete. Peter automatically spun to face the doors, only to see that nobody had come in at all. By the time he realized the threat was just Flash and not actually anyone in danger, he was already falling into the pool. Ned, having seen it coming from behind, shoved Flash in behind Peter and stomped over to sit by Michelle.

The two drenched boys came up spluttering for air at the same time, glaring at each other.

“Really, Flash?” Peter hissed. Flash did not look sorry at all, his smugness at having knocked Peter in tempered by following him right after. He lunged toward Peter to try and dunk him, but Peter was more than able to evade the dunking and hold Flash off by the tops of his arms. He didn’t say anything else, just stared at him eyebrows raised. Flash blinked at Peter, registering that he actually was not able to get himself out of the grasp Peter had on his biceps.

“Since when do you have actual muscles, Puny Parker?” he asked quietly in disbelief, running his eyes across Peter’s torso and arms which were now very visible through his drenched shirt.

“Since I started working out a year ago, jeez man,” Peter replied, putting a bit more than the necessary force into lifting Flash and tossing him sideways into the pool. Liz, noticing the commotion, turned around from where she was in the corner talking to Abe and Charles and said, 

“Peter! I didn’t think you were going to get in,” Peter’s brain blue-screened for a second, as Liz broke off what she was saying to head over.

“I.. uh… wasn’t planning on it?” he fumbled, staring at her. The fact that she was _so pretty_ and wearing a swimsuit was all his brain would register. “But Flash got me in,” he said with a laugh. Flash, hearing his name, swam back over as Peter smiled up at Liz,

“Nice one, Flash,” Liz smiled at him. “I thought Peter was going to hole up on the side all night,” Peter, seeing an opportunity, struggled out of the wet green graphic tee he was in, peeling it up and off with some difficulty.

“That’s me,” Flash bragged, “A…” he trailed off as Peter’s stomach became visible and the pair realized Peter had abs. “A man of action. Jesus Parker, do you live in the gym or something?” 

“I mean, kind of?” Peter was beet red at this point, and Ned dropped into the pool in hopes of rescuing Peter from his own awkwardness and made his way over to the trio. “My Aunt May got me into a few classes at her gym last summer and it stuck. I had dropped most of my extracurriculars for it, but May told me that I had to pick back one academic extra instead of all athletic ones.” Peter shrugged, and Flash just stared at him, silently reassessing.

“Well,” Liz said with a smile as she inched a bit closer, “I’m really glad this was the one that you decided to re-join.” A smile stretched across her face, and Peter didn’t even see Ned approaching. He also missed the curious eyes of the rest of the pool occupants inspecting him.

“Me too,” he said, running his hand through his now-wet hair to push it off of his face, “this is definitely my favorite team at school.”

“Peter’s been taking kickboxing!” Ned said excitedly, “it’s probably _the_ coolest thing either one of us have ever done.” Peter tried to splash Ned to get him to shut up, but Ned just splashed him back and kept talking.

“You got that right,” Flash snorted, and the two of them were off in their own argument. Peter just turned back to Liz and offered a small smile.

“Sorry I almost left you guys in the lurch,” he offered. “I’m glad May set me straight before I missed any actual competitions,” he said, still smiling.

“Once again,” Liz said as she smiled back at him, and this time Peter did not miss the way her eyes ran up and down his torso, “I am _very_ happy about that.”

“Yeah?” he asked, looking up at her eyes, a smile starting to grow across his face.

“Yeah,” she agreed. Mrs. Brandt rounded the students up just a few minutes later, but Peter floated all the way back to the rooms.


	2. DC and beyond

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Peter is in DC and not yet panicking about there being an arms dealer on the loose, but field trips have a bad way of going sideways around him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this chapter doubled in size from where I thought it was going to be. It's the wrap-up of Peter's first year as Spider-Man and all that comes with it.
> 
> hope you enjoy!

#### DC and Beyond

Nationals the next day were amazing for everybody except Charles. Something had given him food poisoning and he spent the entire competition with his mom in the bathroom throwing up, but the team won. Flash had filled in for Charles surprisingly well. In the blinding haze of cheering and lifting the trophy, Peter hugged Ned and even gave Flash a high-five.

“Listen up,” Michelle said as everyone started winding down, “We couldn’t have done it without the actual best team captain in the country. Liz, you are one hundred percent the reason we made it this far, so thank you.” All the girls piled onto Liz for a big group hug as Mr. Harrington passed her the trophy.

“They’re not wrong,” he said with a huge smile, patting her shoulder as well as he could around the herd of excited teenagers. 

The team slowly dispersed as parents came up to hug children and everyone slowly made their way to the back of the auditorium. Peter finally pulled his phone out of his pocket to text May that they had won and saw four messages from Nat. He vaguely registered a man and woman coming up beside him to talk to Liz, but wasn’t paying much attention as he started reading.

_Peter, it just came across my radar that one of the trucks driving alien technology from the salvaged triskelion wreckage was hijacked last night and disappeared somewhere between Baltimore and Washington. I know you were concerned about this field trip, so I’m digging deeper right now._

_Паук малыш,_ _stay with your tour group and don’t do anything stupid. I’ve been looking into alien tech going missing and since this incident, we've expanded the boundaries of the search. There have been incidents popping up recently on the east coast, and it seems like it’s not just an issue in New York anymore. There have been three robberies reported using enhanced alien-based tech in the past few weeks in the DC area alone._

Peter’s focus on the text messages was broken when he heard from beside him, “Gumdrop, I am so, so proud of you.” Liz’s dad said, and that itched at Peter’s brain. Gumdrop? He had definitely heard that recently. _Where_ had he heard that? Peter racked his brain as he turned back to his phone. He read her two most recent messages.

_You haven’t answered me yet so I’m assuming that you’re busy, but if you’re trying to take things into your own hands, do not. I’m on my way down to advise the team that is investigating the theft._

_I’ll drop by when I can, just share your location to my phone and I’ll come if there are any updates._

_Мать Паук_ _,_ he replied immediately to let her know he had been behaving himself. _I just looked at my phone, we weren’t allowed to have them for a few hours. I didn’t do anything stupid._

_This is going to sound weird, but can you look up one of my classmate's dads? Her name is Liz Allan and we both go to the Midtown School of Science and Technology. He’s here and he’s setting off my spidey-senses, but I don’t know why he set them off._

Pete didn’t hear back from her immediately, so he did actually text May before rejoining his classmates. He gave Liz a shy smile that she returned over her mom’s shoulder. Liz’s dad focused on him as he followed his daughter’s gaze and Peter hastily looked away, ducking behind Ned’s silhouette.

* * *

By three in the afternoon, Peter was regretting all of his life choices that led him to this moment. The group celebration trip to the National Mall was utter chaos and his enhanced senses were not happy. Cherry blossom season in Washington overlapped with Spring Break, and the number of tourists filling the lawns was insane. The Decathlon team gave up trying to stay together, and set a designated meet-up for every hour, on the hour.

“Each student group must have an adult present with them at all times,” Mr. Harrington shouted over the crowd. “If you lose your adult, all of you have my school cell phone number on paper. Call it immediately and someone will come to fetch you,” and with that, they were set free. Almost immediately, Peter was swept along with Ned and his Mom, who had arrived to see them this morning. Ned was lucky enough to be flying back with her, delighted to escape the second half of the trip on a bus. They had just started to head towards the Lincoln Memorial when his senses flared.

“Hey Pete,” came a voice from his right and Peter turned around to see who it was. Nat was standing beside him, in full Allie gear, looking like a cool older sibling attending a field trip.

“What’s going on? I thought I was not part of this?” he whispered at her.

“The Toomes tip was hidden gold. I can explain more in a bit, just keep your mouth shut for this part.” She turned to face Ned and his mom, extending her hand cheerfully.

"Who's Toomes?" Peter whispered back, but she was already talking and didn't respond.

“Hi,” she said with a very bright smile directed at Ned's family, “I’m Allie, May’s sister. It’s really nice to meet you. Peter talks about you all the time, Ned.” 

“Hi?” He said, in a small, vaguely confused kind of way. “I didn’t know May had a sister.” Nat just smiled at him and turned to Ned’s mom, while Ned turned to Peter.

“Do I know about her?” he asked, grabbing one of Peter’s shoulders. “I feel like May’s sister is someone I ought to know.” Peter frowned over at Ned, but he could actually work with this.

“I’ve definitely mentioned her. We do classes together most Saturdays.” He said with a smile, thankful that wasn’t actually a lie. “We’re pretty close.”

“Oh!! Yes. Ok, I have heard of her. I don’t think that you said she was your aunt though,” Ned said with a slightly accusing glare.

“Well, she’s not _really_ my aunt? I’m not technically blood-related to May at all, we’re only related through marriage.” It didn’t seem to make sense to Ned, but he let it slide as they turned back to listen to what the adults were saying.

“I’m just going to steal Peter away for a little bit. I did wish I could have made it to the actual competition, but I had an emergency business meeting hold me up that took too long.” Allie was saying, as she got an arm around Peter’s waist. Peter watched the interaction with fascination. It was almost eerie seeing Nat like this, sliding from one personality into another in less than a second.

“I’m just glad you were in the DC office this weekend,” Peter said with a grin. “I know May really wanted to come but she had a couple of hospital shifts she couldn’t turn down.”

“Glad to be here, kiddo,” she said, bumping their hips together. Ned just cooed at the two of them as Peter rolled his eyes.

The two of them quickly detached from Ned’s family and Nat handed him an earbud. She mimed putting it in his ear, and Peter hurriedly got with the program.

“Ok Kid, I’m not going to drop your real name if I can help it. You’re kid, kiddo, or малыш.”

“Mal-ish,” Peter repeated back. He felt a bit like there were rocks in his mouth with the unusual pronunciation. Nat grinned at him and he smiled back. He had looked up all of her Russian words as soon as he figured out how to spell them. “That’s Russian for kid. I did look that one up. What name are you going by for this?”

“Nat or Мать to you, but you’ll know if it’s me they’re talking to, don’t worry.” She showed him how to turn on, mute, or broadcast permanently on his com, and then started to explain what was going on.

“So, your classmate’s dad was fascinating. His name is Adrian Toomes. He initially had a huge contract to clean up a lot of alien wreckage in the tri-state area, which he lost to the DODC a few years back. Since then, he’s still been running a successful salvage and demolition business, though not even close to that scale of things. All of his on-the books finances are squeaky clean, but the history is too neat for us to not look into further.” Peter’s brow furrowed as he thought about how different Liz seemed from her father.

“So no proof yet, but you want to look further?” Peter was frowning now. 

“Yes. Two of his employees were seen in the company of some people on FBI watch lists, so we don’t know if he’s involved or not right now. There’s a team back in Queens ready to go, but we need someone to get up close to the family so that Toomes is thoroughly distracted while we’re breaking into his house. We don’t know if we’re going to trip any alarms and if we do, we need a few seconds to re-write anything that gets sent to his phone or his team, if not everything is above-board.” While it made sense to Peter, he didn’t actually understand why he was being looped in on this one.

“Ok, so how am I supposed to help with that?” He was frowning in concentration as he looked across the crowded lawns of the mall. Natasha privately thought that his thinking face was the most adorable. 

“You’re about to ask his daughter out on a date.” Peter felt himself turn bright red at those words, and then pale dramatically.

“I’m… what??” Natasha gave him a thoroughly unimpressed look, followed by a sharp smirk. 

“You heard me.”

“I can’t do that to Liz!” Peter was very adamant about not involving Liz in any of this. It wasn’t her fault if her dad was breaking the law. “Liz is the best. I want to keep her far away from all of this.”

“Come on, паук пацан, you cannot be this dense. You were going to ask her anyway.”

“What? Nooo. I was not!” _Oooh, too much denial too fast, Peter,_ his brain laughed at him. One eyebrow raised on Nat’s face. She definitely didn’t believe him.

“You absolutely were. I have actually seen the two of you interact. Camera feeds are not well protected if you know Tony Stark.” All of the blood rushed back into Peter’s face, but Natasha wasn’t done. “She’s not going to say no, and it’ll be good for you to figure out how to do this. Consider this part of your spider-squad training. This is an important life skill.”

She stared at him a little bit more but didn’t say anything else. She ran her fingers through his hair to straighten him up a bit but left it mostly alone. Peter was immediately thankful that the yellow blazers were back at their hotel.

“Perfect. Now, pay attention closely, this is how you’re going to do this. I’m only telling you this once.” Peter paid very close attention. He thought he could manage the plan, but kept that thought in his brain for now. Parker luck was the worst.

Ten minutes later, Peter had technically done an exemplary job at pulling off his mission directive. He could take comfort in that if nothing else. While he did manage to ask Liz on a date to the school dance, he also managed to faceplant in the process, thoroughly drawing the attention of everyone within thirty feet. 

While that was great for the mission, it was bad for Peter’s everything. It did, however, serve to thoroughly distract her father. He looked like he couldn’t decide if he wanted to help or shove Peter back onto the ground. He could see Nat out of the corner of his eye laughing herself sick.

“Peter,” Liz was talking to him, so he dragged his horrified eyes up from his hands to her face. He could see a new rip in the knee of his jeans. “I’d really like to go to the dance with you,” she said. He unfolded his arms from their defensive cross across his chest. Those were not the words he was expecting to hear.

“Really? You do?” His spidey sense told him there were many eyes drilling into the back of his head. “I mean, that’s totally great.” Liz smiled at him some more, and he felt his blush starting to fade.

“I’ve been too busy planning it to think about going myself, but I’m glad you asked. I was _hoping_ you’d ask,” she added on with a big smile.

“I’m just glad you said yes after I pretty much tried to become one with the pavement,” Peter said with a nervous laugh. “I’m pretty sure I tripped over that chalk line,” he said as he waved at some of the writing behind them.

Peter ducked his head and glanced around nervously. There were Liz’s parents. Her mom was smiling at him, but her dad’s hard stare bored into him. Right. Potential alien weapons dealer or something equally bad. Do not piss off.

“The dance isn’t for a couple more weeks,” Liz was saying with a smile, “Do you want to do something before then? Get food or do homework somewhere fun?”

“I would really, really like that,” Peter said, not having expected that at all. His smile got a lot bigger and a lot less stressed out. “My schedule is a little bit crazy, but I’ll make time.” Peter was pretty sure he had a really stupid smile on his face. Probably the dopiest smile ever. Peter needed to leave before something else could happen to ruin the moment, so he chose to tactically flee.

“I should probably go back to my group, I just saw you over here and couldn’t help but come over,” Liz smiled like he was being sweet. He normally would have meant it as it sounded, but he was also equally sure that if he hadn’t come over, there would have been bruises involved from Nat.

“I’m glad you did. I’ll see you at the next meet up,” Peter could still see over her shoulder to where Liz’s parents were standing, and her dad was still staring pointedly at the pair. Peter could see that he was also slowly pulling out his phone, and had a minor bit of panic. Pete hoped he had bought enough time. There was a crackle in his ear, and then words coming through a bit too loudly,

_We’re good, you’re free from your torture, Kid. He was plenty distracted with that faceplant._

He turned to scan for Nat in the crowd. She had moved again, but he found her far to his left. Peter turned to head her way but glanced over again to Liz. She was walking back over to her parents but tracking Peter’s movements as well. He smiled at her, and she smiled back. 

Success!

“Was that so bad, малыш?” Nat asked, as he finally made it over to her.

“Yes,” he moaned tragically. “It really was. Did you not watch me fall flat on my face?”

“You realize she said yes to not one, but two dates at least, right? You did _something_ right.”

Peter started smiling again, realizing that that was actually true.

“Yeah, Liz is the best like that.”

They milled around the mall some more, pretending to be tourists but actually keeping an eye on the Toomes family from a distance. It wasn’t a surprise when Liz’s dad stepped away from the rest of his family to take a phone call, but after that, he ducked into the row of cherry trees lining the edges of the mall, he didn’t reappear.

“We’re following at a distance and making sure someone else picks up the tail when we have to go check-in,” Nat murmurs, and he hears her clearly only because of his sensitive hearing. “We’re keeping this hunt low priority right now because him being here was a stroke of luck we didn’t expect, but it’s fact-finding and nothing more, kiddo.” Peter nodded at her, thrilled to be included even a little bit. They tailed at a distance for ten minutes, with Natasha keeping a string of best-tailing-practices low in his ear. Eventually, they had to turn back and rejoin the AcaDec Team for the meetup.

At the rendezvous, Liz and her mother didn’t seem too worried that her dad was gone, so Peter tried to ignore the ball of anxiety in his stomach. It didn’t help that Peter’s baseline existence was a ball of anxiety, but he was trying. Thankfully, Nat had a nice talk with Mr. Harrington and got him to agree that they would all meet up back at the hotel with their respective parent groups by seven pm.

“Let's go,” she said, immensely happy to be leaving the crowds, “There are actual places we need to be.”

The pair spent an uneventful evening tailing Toomes and trying to locate the shipment that had gotten stolen the night before, but no big leads turned up.

* * *

That night close to midnight, as Peter was sneaking out of his shared hotel room by going off the balcony, a call from Nat came in through his suit’s heads up display. Even before Peter could answer, her voice came through his suit, overriding his normal protocol.

“Spider-child of mine, what do you think you’re doing?”

“Absolutely nothing, Мать Паук. Nothing at all.” He got his webbing attached to the roof and sling-shotted himself up using his strength.

“I can see from the display that you’re in the suit right now,” she commented idly, sounding bored.

“Would I do that?” he asked her in what he was hoping was an innocent voice. His feet touched down quietly on the roof, and he came face to face with the Black Widow, seemingly very comfortable with a holo-display and a lawn chair, propped up in a corner of the hotel roof. 

“Uhhh, hi?” he asked, as he contemplated whether it would make it better or worse if he just threw himself off the roof.

“I’m not telling you off for sneaking out,” she said as she swiftly shut down the display and folded up her lawn chair. She stashed it off behind the AC unit and turned back to him, “That would be hypocritical. I’m just telling you that if it’s a midnight joy-ride you’re going on, you’re taking me with you.”

“Um, what?” Peter’s brain isn’t really comprehending the situation.

“You really think that you’re the only adrenaline junkie around here? I plan to take full advantage of your super strength since I can’t swing myself around.” Peter thought he remembered some footage of her jumping onto a chitauri air-scooter so that definitely checked out.

“How do you want to do this?” Peter asked with a wary stare at her. “I can go piggyback or just hold you with one arm, but the second way you probably won’t have as much fun. Two arms free means we can go a lot faster.” 

She cocked her head at him for a second before jumping onto his back and locking her arms around his shoulders. Peter did a couple of test-jumps and everything sat fine. They were pretty used to working together like this, so it wasn’t too weird.

“Yip-yip _,_ Паук малыш,” she said, poking his shoulder impatiently. 

“Woah, who are you calling a bison? Rude! Also, you’ve seen the cartoons?”

“I have actually spent some time around children you know,” she said drily, as they made their way off to the edge of the building. “My best friend has a whole tribe of them. Now, let's go,” 

By two am, the pair had gotten a whole host of incriminating pictures on top of national monuments, museums, and government buildings. Peter was starting to get tired, feeling the day in the sun wearing on him. They had paused their romp on the dome of the Jefferson Memorial and sat on the very top of it, looking out across the city. 

“Send me a copy of those pictures,” Nat demanded as they kicked back a bit. “Some of them are absolute gold.” 

“Sure,” he said, as he pulled out his phone to do it right away. “Oh, do you have an Instagram? One on the dl? If you do, I’ll tag you in the ones I post with you.” Her eyes darted over to him before she shook her head and laughed a bit.

“Just keep it anonymous. I don’t want to be wiping any criminal charges off of your record for trespassing on government property or defacing national monuments.” Peter snorted. 

“I promise to get Ned to scrub any information details from the photo data, mom,” Peter rolled his eyes at her and spent a few quiet minutes picking out the best pictures to send. Eventually, they stood up and stretched out their limbs.

“Anywhere you want me to drop you off?” Peter asked her.

“Yeah, I’m meeting a couple of buddies over there,” She points at a glass-fronted building off to the east a few streets over. Peter squinted at it in the dark. 

“Are you ironically meeting your international spy-friends on the roof of the international spy museum at two in the morning?” He asked, feeling the edges of hysteria beginning creep upon him. A laugh bubbled out of his mouth before he could pull it back.

“I’m friends with the curator,” Nat sniffs at him. She’s grinning at him like a shark, “You would not believe how much absolute shit spies have slipped into the displays over the years,” she laughs conspiratorially, and Peter loses his battle with the laughter.

“It started with Peggy Carter you know,” Nat tried to explain before the giggles got the best of her. “Now, most of the spies who are worth their salt have added, modified, or stolen at least one of their own things there. It’s almost a rite of passage at this point.” Peter is dead. There’s no way. He makes a mental note to try and drag Ned with him to the museum on Sunday when they can make a game out of it. 

“I like to keep tabs on my display and the SHIELD section and make sure to keep them stocked with plenty of lies. I replace every picture of my real face with more and more outlandish look-alikes in the same location. Nobody’s called me out on it yet, but I’m waiting patiently for the day.” Peter can feel the smirk without even looking at her face. He’s mostly done laughing, so he turns back to her. 

“Are you ready to be dropped off at the house of lies then?”

“Yip yip.”  
“You’re never letting that go, are you?” he asked with a sigh. Her silence on the matter was all the confirmation he needed. “Didn’t think so,” he said with a sigh as she fastened her legs around his waist. He climbed them down the building before they walked themself across the street. If he was less than inconspicuous climbing up the glass face of the museum, that sounded like a Natasha problem to deal with the next day.

* * *

_The morning before the Spring Fling dance_

Pete frantically tries to call Natasha after the latest tip he got. She doesn’t pick up the first time so he leaves a voicemail, but he isn’t hopeful about hearing back from her in time. His next call is through Karen. 

“Karen, can you get in contact with anyone who knows more about this situation? Mr. Stark’s team or Nat’s team or anyone?” 

“I’ll reroute your call to Happy Hogan,” Karen’s calm voice says through his mask. Happy’s phone rings twice and someone finally picks up.

“Hogan,” says the no-nonsense voice that Peter vaguely recognizes.

“Hi Mr. Hogan,” Peter says breathlessly, as he’s flinging himself off of the parking garage he ran into Aaron Davis in. “I just got word that there’s going to be another weapon’s deal on the Staten Island Ferry in like, an hour,” he shouts down the line.

“Yeah kid,” Happy says, and he sounds annoyed this time. “We roped the FBI in on this one, and they have a team stationed at that meeting.” Peter slows down a bit and swings himself up to the closest flat roof he can find.

“You already knew about it?”

“Not us, but the FBI has been following a career criminal that’s been looking to buy from Toomes, so they looped us in on this one.”

“Cool. So, you’re saying I don’t need to go down there and deal with it?”

“I’d really rather you sat this one out, kid. The FBI is already cranky enough. Don’t you have homework or something to do?”

“What? I can be helpful! I know what I’m doing!” Peter’s voice was rising, but Happy wasn’t having any of it.

“If you barge in and the FBI sting is messed up, they’re going to be on your spidey butt like the vigilante you are. This is one party you don’t want to crash.”

“Fine, Mr. Hogan. I’ll stay out of it.”

“Good,” come’s Happy’s voice across Karen’s system before the line goes dead.

“Was that rude?” Peter asks Karen as he starts to swing down to the docks with less haste. “I feel like that was rude.”

“I wouldn’t know, Peter. I have not been programmed with much sensitivity to human emotions.”

“I know Kare, thanks anyway.” Peter lands on a roof close to the ferry launch and grabs his backpack. He changes as fast as he can behind a few HVAC units and checks the fire escape and alley for cameras before making his way down to street level. 

He slips onto the boat in his street clothes, finding a seat as close to the middle as possible and settling down for the ride. He slips into meditation and just listens.

In the end, Mac Gargan and two men on the selling side are arrested when the Ferry lands on the island. Peter didn’t see a hair of Mr. Toomes’ head on the boat, and he feels even more nervous in the dark pit of his stomach. He gets off the ferry with the rest of the passengers on Staten Island when they arrive, but doubles back to get back on the next boat. He ends up taking it back to Manhattan as the light goes from noon sun to a lower angle in the afternoon. With a sigh at the FBI not wrapping the entire case up neatly, Peter heads home to get ready for the dance.

* * *

Peter and Liz have a nice dinner with Liz’s mom before heading to the dance. Her mom drives them over, and Peter is utterly charmed by her. Pete obliquely asks where her dad is, but she just says that he’s off on a business trip. Peter doesn’t pry, even though he desperately wants to.

An hour into the dance, Liz finally looks down at her phone and frowns.

“Peter, I’m really sorry to do this to you, but I have to call my mom. She’s been blowing up my phone for the last twenty minutes. Will you be ok here?”  
“Sure,” he says, internally beginning to freak out. “I see the rest of the decathlon team over where we left them, I can join back up with them.” She smiles a bit at him, clearly worried before she turns and practically runs out of the gym. Peter quickly makes his way over to the team.

“How’s it going, Ned?” he asks quietly as he joins the outside fringes of the team.

“It’s great! Ned enthuses, waving his cup of punch around. Peter smiles at him, glad that Ned is having a good time. “How are you two doing?”

“I’m worried about Liz,” Peter says, trying to emphasize the statement with his eyebrows. He had clued Ned in a little bit about Liz’s dad but hadn’t given him the whole story.

“How do you mean?” Ned asks, and Peter is very aware of their teammates listening in. 

“She just got a bunch of calls and messages from her mom. I think she’s having some kind of family emergency.” Peter’s downcast expression was not faked at all. The rest of the team murmurs worriedly, and MJ goes to get a drink to take out to Liz. The two girls make it back in five minutes, and Liz doesn’t look ok.

“Peter,” her voice cracks a little bit as she starts to talk, “I’m really sorry to do this, but can we get out of here? My mom said she’s on her way.” The sinking feeling in Peter’s stomach only increases, and he feels a wave of goosebumps break out across his arms.

“Yeah sure,” he says, “I’m going to run to the bathroom and I’ll catch up. I’ll only be gone for two minutes.” Liz nods at him, and Sally comes over and puts a hand on her shoulder. MJ just stares down Peter and says

“Start running, Loser,” and Peter takes off out of the gym. He pulls every spidey-trick he can to get to his locker quickly and digs around in the junk at the bottom before he finally digs out his old web-shooters and a few canisters of his fluid.

“Thank god, I almost took this home,” he sighs. He also grabs the only other piece of clothing in there, an old, tattering hoodie, and slams his locker shut. The sprint back to the gym is frantic, and he makes it in twenty seconds flat. He barely gets the shooters onto his arms and his blazer back in place right before he makes it back into the gym.

“Ned,” he calls, as he pulls Ned aside to talk to him out of earshot of the decathlon team. “I’m going to send you two phone numbers. Please blow them up. My sense is going haywire right now and I don’t know what’s about to happen. Just tell them I’m leaving the school dance with Liz Allan, but her dad’s name is Toomes. I have a really bad feeling in the pit of my stomach.” 

Peter finally rejoins Liz at the steps of the school and after a minute or two, they both look up as her family car pulls up. It’s not her mother driving though, it’s her father. Peter’s phone is in his hand instantly, and he sends a frantic text message out to Happy and Nat:

_Getting in the car with Liz and her dad, don’t want to make him suspicious and don’t want to out myself to Liz. Sorry. I’m keeping my phone on as long as I can so you’ll have a signal to follow._

After that, he restarts his phone and locks it down, hopefully, to prevent anyone from opening it up.

“Daddy!” Liz exclaims as she runs to the car, “You made it back! I didn’t think you were going to be back until late tonight!”

“I didn’t want to completely miss the dance you planned entirely by yourself, Gumdrop.” he smiled at her and kissed her cheek.

“Hello, Peter,” he said with a tight smile. “I hope you’ve been treating my little girl right.” Peter nodded at him without saying anything while Mr. Toomes opened the back door of the car and gestured for the two teens to get in. “Gumdrop, I’m going to get you home as soon as possible, and then I’ll drop Peter off. It’s a family emergency or we’d go the other way around.”

“Of course, Daddy,” she says with a worried smile, as she grips Peter’s hand. The terrible feeling in Peter’s stomach increases. He frantically text’s Ned the numbers for Happy and “Allie” and then texts May that Liz is having a family emergency and he’ll be home when he can. The car drive home is tense. They drop Liz at the end of their street, as Peter can see a few large SUVs in the driveway. 

“Honey, I’m letting you out here so I don’t have to go all the way around with Pete.” Liz looks extremely confused but does move to get out of the car.

“Peter, I’ll call you later tonight, ok?” She says quietly, not wanting to do anything more in front of her dad. Peter just squeezes her hand and smiles back. She leans in and kisses his cheek. “I had a really good time tonight,” she adds, before kissing his cheek and sliding out the door. The slam of the door closing brings him back to his senses, and the car starts moving almost immediately. Peter, so off his game from the kiss, doesn’t see the gun in Mr. Toomes’s hand until it’s too late.

“Now Pete,” he turns fully around in the car to fix Peter with a stare, a dark look on his face, “why don’t you start by handing over that phone of yours, and then you can explain to me why you were on the Staten Island ferry this morning? I’ll cut you a little slack since you’ve been so good to my Gumdrop, but that will only get you so far.”

_fuck_

* * *

Mr. Toomes doesn’t even pretend that he's going to drive Peter home. His phone gets dropped out of the car window while they are still in the neighborhood. Instead, Mr. Toomes brings Pete to an emptied out warehouse with a gun pointed at him the entire time. Though he keeps a shred of hope in the back of his mind, Peter knows that he has no hope of being found in time to stop the robbery. 

Mr. Toomes plays up the intimidation, and while Peter denies knowing anything about the weapons, it doesn’t seem to convince him. Peter does his best to explain away all the coincidences but he outs himself when he dodges the vulture exoskeleton a bit too neatly. The many passes it makes at him are almost exhilarating, but he realizes his mistake when the walls start to rumble and shake. There's nothing Peter can do as the building collapses down on him, pinning him under concrete slabs. The vulture is out before the entire ceiling drops, leaving Peter buried under the rubble, alone.

Peter lays there for just a few seconds before frantically starting to call for help. Nobody hears him, nobody knows where he is, he doesn’t have his suit, and Peter doesn't see any other way out. Maybe someone saw the building collapse and called it in, but they're far enough out that he doesn't think so. After panicking, Peter gets to work. Slowly, slowly, ever so slowly, he lifts.

And lifts

_And lifts._

And finally….

The building moves.

The chase to catch up with the vulture is horrible. The vulture himself is horrible. Stark planes are horrible. Peter is operating almost entirely on instinct the entire time, doing what he can to not die. He feels so exposed in only a hoodie and his dress pants, but it's better than letting a weapons dealer take whatever is on this airplane.

Peter doesn't know why nobody has caught up with the rogue plane until he spies the vulture in the cockpit with a device plugged into the front.

_Oh, they don't know the plane isn't on course. That's bad_ , he thinks to himself. He throws himself into just getting the plane down by any means, and miraculously, they don't cause as much damage as they could have when the plane crashes. 

Peter had gotten abused enough without being on the outside of a plane crash, thank you, so he's not expecting to be mauled again by the vulture before he even manages to open his eyes.

The exoskeleton the man is wearing is starting to spark dangerously, and Peter aims for the glowing, sparking pieces trying to pry the wings apart at their weakest points. He gets one wing mostly torn off when something in the suit explodes, throwing the two men across the beach like rag dolls. Peter manages to stagger up to his feet, and he runs over to Mr. Toomes.

"Please be alive, please be alive, please be alive," he chants under his breath as he can see the other wing starting to spark like mad from the damage it just took. He tries to pry the man out of the suit, but it doesn't seem to be working. Frantically, he rips the other wing off and throws it as far as he possibly can before it explodes. It makes it almost 20 feet before the second core explodes, sending a shockwave across the two of them.

Peter holds through it, but it's knocked the man under him out. He feels again for a pulse and thankfully it's still there, steady beneath his fingers.

Once the wreckage settles and he can't see any more unstable power cells, Peter takes stock of himself. He's very grateful to be alive, but never, ever wants to do that again. He can hear sirens approaching very quickly now, so he takes off down the beach and across the fire, up to the attractions on Coney Island.

Natasha finds a battered, distraught spiderling sitting on top of the Cyclone an hour and a half later. She hands over two protein bars and a bottle of water that vanish in seconds. She drops down next to him and he leans some of his weight up against her. They sit in silence for a few minutes, staring out at the crew putting out fires and taking inventory of the airplane’s contents. Nat is the first one to break the quiet.

“You did good, kid. Nobody was expecting them to try and hijack this payload.”

“Yeah?” he asked, not having enough energy to do much more than hold his head up.

“Yeah.”

“That sucked so much though,” he gently whined. Natasha’s fingers found his hair for a brief minute as she sat still beside him, trying to figure out if she could even say anything comforting at all.

“The right thing isn’t often the fun thing, in this line of work,” was all she ended up saying. Peter didn’t respond. He wasn’t sure he _could_ respond to that without being bad-tempered.

“Did anyone find my phone?” Peter asked after another few minutes of silence.

“Hogan has it,” Nat said with a frown. “I think Stark was talking about upgrading it. You did him a massive favor here,” she said, waving a hand at the beach below them. “Without you, a lot of this cargo would have been gone before they got here. Their hacker was very, very good.”

“Really?” Peter asked, perking up a bit after the calories had some time to hit his system. Nat just raised an eyebrow at him. 

“I’ve said plenty of nice things to you tonight, stop fishing.” Peter just pouted and buried his face in her shoulder.

“Do you have any juice left in those bracers to get us down from here?” She asked quietly.

“Yeah,” he sighed and rolled his shoulders. “Do you have a car or something? I don’t think I’m up to swinging all the way back to Queens tonight.”

“Yeah, I’ll bring you by my base here in the city before you get home though, otherwise May will freak even more than usual.” Peter looked down at his destroyed outfit.

“I’m telling her I got banged up when Liz’s dad got arrested,” he said with a frown.

“Yeah, that may be for the best, unless you want to tell her you got in another fight.”

“Ooh, hard pass,” he said, frowning at the thought of what May’s face would do if he did that.

“Let's scoot then,” she said, glaring down at the beach. “Happy hasn’t seen my car yet, but he’ll definitely recognize it if he does and I’d really like to avoid that right now.” Peter anchored her into his side with some of the last of his strength before dropping them slowly off the edge.

Already the night was looking up.

_End of Sophomore Year_

Liz had to move to Oregon with her mother that summer, and both teens were extremely broken up about it. Nobody would outright tell the kids that it was because her dad feared some retribution and wanted to hide his family, but Peter could read between the lines well enough. Liz was the most apologetic, and Peter didn’t have the heart to tell her that he had done more than the FBI to roll her dad into jail. He didn’t think that would go over too well.

In her place, Michelle was named the new AcaDec captain, told the whole team to call her MJ, and then proceeded to make Peter more uncomfortable than he had ever been in his life. It was the most confused he’d felt in years but in a good way. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, Peter still came out of this with the same bumps and bruises, still came out messed up about locking his girlfriend's dad up, but maybe he comes out with a bit more confidence. Maybe he learned that he can talk to the Avengers on a more equal footing. Learned that he actually can ask a girl out with confidence. Maybe he'll take more after the black widow than Tony Stark, less flashy but not any less competent for it. Maybe not, Peter can be kind of hard-headed sometimes.
> 
> Anyway.
> 
> I have a few more installments in the works, so I hope that if you like this one (your kudos and comments give me life!) then you'll stick around for the next few.
> 
> xoxo
> 
> Lisa

**Author's Note:**

> This is the first half of a re-imagined Spider-Man: Homecoming. The next one just needs some editing, so I'm hoping it'll be up relatively soon. Comments and Kudos give me life :-)


End file.
